


We Define Our Moral Ground

by thereweregiants



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Mentions of Underage Sex, Post-Fall of Overwatch, Unhealthy Relationships, background r76
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26437261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thereweregiants/pseuds/thereweregiants
Summary: Jesse got on his knees for Gabriel at the start and somehow never stopped.
Relationships: Jesse McCree/Reaper | Gabriel Reyes
Comments: 11
Kudos: 60





	We Define Our Moral Ground

**Author's Note:**

> back on my bullshit again oops
> 
> title from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' [The Ship Song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKlaV-9Vzsk) (yes this is the Superior Version)  
> written to a bunch of Kronos Quartet

Jesse always was a practical one.

When his family was gone and the school was blown away and there was nothing left for him, he made his way out into the world, determined to survive by any means possible. 

He learned to suck cock before he knew how to add up the money he got for it. He got good enough that he convinced a teacher that had been thrown out of school - Jesse would watch at how the man touched him with trembling fingers, knew just why he was thrown out - to teach him math instead of paying. 

Jesse found Ashe, learned to fuck women, learned he didn’t like fucking women, founded Deadlock. He didn’t have to be on his knees for anyone then, they started their own gang with their own rules. People’s greed is predictable - for sex, for weapons, for drugs. They left the first alone at Jesse’s insistence - people would understand and forgive guns when they wouldn’t let their puritanical views go. 

Everything was, fine, until those dicks in the black outfits showed up.

Until Gabriel.

They struck their deal in that windowless room with Morrison looming over like the angel with a stick up his ass that Jesse was sure that he was. But then Morrison left and the lights on the cameras went out and Gabriel was still sitting there, and Jesse knew what he was supposed to do. He wonders if the callouses on his knees will ever really fade.

Gabriel raised an eyebrow but never hesitated in spreading his legs, unzipping himself because Jesse was still in the handcuffs.

One of the nicer things about growing up where Jesse did was that everyone out in the desert was malnourished, rough skin and jerky muscle over jagged bone. Narrow hips and spindly dicks, every last one of them.

Not Gabriel. If Jesse tries to go down on him like he’s used to doing, he’s gonna end up with broken teeth and a dislocated jaw. 

Gabriel fucks his face easily, one hand resting on the arm of the chair and playing with the cigar he’d plucked from Jesse’s mouth, the other shoving Jesse’s head down onto his dick - relentless, too deep, but not cruel. 

It’s either not personal, or very personal. Jesse isn’t sure yet. 

Gabriel comes down Jesse’s throat without a sound, broad hand holding his head down until Jesse swallows it all and is fighting for air. Gabriel wipes a drip of come off of Jesse’s chin, licks it off his own thumb. Lets his cock hang out of his pants, soft and covered with Jesse’s spit as he sparks up the cigar. He holds Jesse’s eyes as he smokes it for a minute, finally leaning down to let Jesse take a puff and get the sourbitter taste out of his mouth.

That’s how Blackwatch begins.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse doesn’t understand it, at first.

Gabriel drills him, trains him. Bulks him up and then carves him down until Gabriel can wrap his hands around biceps and waist and neck and nod to himself and Jesse doesn’t know if he’ll be told to run laps or bend over afterwards. 

And bend over he does - 

In the showers, in the training rooms, in conference rooms, in Gabriel’s office, in the kitchens at four in the morning, after good missions, after bad missions.

Anything for Gabriel.

But Jesse watches, because Jesse has always watched, and he sees Gabriel with Jack. Sees the moments in between the professionalism. The lips brushing ears as they whisper too close, the hands that wrap around gently, carefully. The way Gabriel can look down and away and smile for just a moment.

At first it’s confusing, then it hurts, then it’s something Jesse needs to solve.

It takes years.

He figures it out bit by bit, situation by situation. Like when Genji joins up, and Jesse watches carefully for a while, waits for the fragile-tense man with a mostly fictional body to snap. Gabriel on the other hand has no problem palming Jesse’s ass in front of Genji, and after freezing in place Jesse realizes that whatever  _ this _ was, it was in a language Genji understood.

Or when they’re in Valencia and Jesse finds himself unexpectedly charming with the locals with his brand of streetslang Spanish. And Gabriel is supposed to be gone on surveillance all evening so when a boy with pretty eyelashes feeds him sweet wine and sweeter kisses, why not take him back to a supposedly empty room? Except Gabriel comes back early. Sits himself down on a chair while the pretty boy goes down on Jesse and doesn’t even notice they have an audience, although Jesse eyes Gabriel like a cornered animal. Gabriel who watches with dark eyes at every expression on Jesse’s face, every movement of his muscles, listens to every noise that Jesse involuntarily lets out. Jesse comes in the pretty boy’s mouth, gives him a kiss, and then the boy runs in a babble of syllables Jesse can’t understand when he notices Gabriel’s hulking form.

That night the hands on Jesse’s hips are too tight, the bruises a little more pointed than usual. The bitemarks on his neck are above the collar of his uniform shirt, something Jesse grumbles about but Gabriel is blankfaced at.

After the good missions Jesse pulls his knees up to his chest, flat on his back on top of Gabriel’s desk, quietly and wordlessly open in the light of his computer monitors.

After the bad missions… 

Well.

Early on in Jesse’s career bad missions meant that there was incorrect intel or perhaps too many people, something minor but out of their control to fuck things up. Things never went truly bad in those days - perhaps they’d end up with bodies instead of prisoners, empty hands instead of packages. Back then Gabriel would make their squad drill extra hours in the training rooms before they even had the chance to eat or sleep, until they knew that whatever small part they played in the fuckup, it wouldn’t happen again. 

When the training room was empty Gabriel would fuck Jesse’s face until he was leaking tears and snot or bend him over a bench, something hard and rough and never with enough lube. 

Sometimes Jesse looked forward to the bad missions, back in those strange sweet early days.

Then things changed. 

Bad missions meant that whole squads were dead, that half a city would be in flames. Bad missions now weren’t quiet, they were front page news somewhere in the world. 

After those they weren’t going to the training rooms after, they were going to medical. That was best case scenario. Worst case they were going to a room with Morrison and Amari, holding their wounds so they didn’t bleed on the table as they gave sitreps through teeth that wobbled in their sockets and fewer functional eyes than Amari had. After those meetings Gabriel would stay and talk to Morrison, all quiet and intense. There weren’t any soft touches any longer that Jesse could see.

Perhaps a few hours later, perhaps the middle of the night when the painkillers had overcome everything to finally let him fall asleep only to be woken by a rattling at his door, Gabriel comes for Jesse.

Things are different now, though. It’s been a decade of getting hardened into shape and being the best of what Blackwatch can offer, and maybe it was Jesse’s friends - as much as he has friends - that died that night or his eye socket that got shattered. And so the night comes where the blood on Jesse’s hands hasn’t dried yet and Gabriel doesn’t get to do what he wants, not anymore. 

Jesse’s quarters get the next best thing to destroyed that night, though no one would ever comment on the noise because they saw Commander Reyes enter his rooms. And finally when Jesse has Gabriel pinned down but Gabriel starts to wriggle out of his pants and spreads his legs under him and Jesse fucks him for the first time until they’re both breathless and speechless and wounds all broken open - 

Finally Jesse starts to get it.

How he’s Gabriel’s penance, his punishment for himself. How every time he tracks him down and holds him down it’s - self-flagellation. 

When Jesse was eight he stole a cigarette and his father caught him. Made Jesse smoke the whole pack of twenty, one right after another, until his eyes were red and nose was running and he was vomiting in between puffs. But instead of putting him off of them, those damned cigarettes turned into a twenty year habit that Jesse has yet to quit.

And that’s Jesse for Gabriel.

He should have been killed off early, the punk with a big mouth and bigger false bravado that Gabriel found himself agreeing to take on in a moment of lust and overconfidence. Instead he threaded his roots into Gabriel’s skin and never let go, just dug deeper every year until he’s twined along Gabriel’s nerves and now neither of them knows how to get free.

They lay there, exhausted and bleeding and come-covered, until Gabriel gets up with a grunt, sorts through the broken lamps and torn sheets until he finds things to patch them up, to clean them. 

Jesse watches as Gabriel wipes away the blood and lube, sticks butterfly bandages on with swollen-knuckled hands. He wants to say  _ I’m not your recruit anymore _ and  _ you don’t get to treat me like that _ but tonight it was Gabriel with the bruised knees and cracked corners of his mouth, so Jesse stays quiet.

-x-x-x-x-x-

The commanders don’t talk any more. Everyone knows this.

Gabriel sticks with Blackwatch until they lose Moira and lose Genji but he’ll never ever lose Jesse so that’s that.

Morrison confides in Amari, but then Amari is gone. And so Strike Commander Morrison is alone, all broad shoulders and harsh-cut angles that fold in one by one until he’s a paper cut out of a man, nothing but edges that slice right up until they rip.

After Venice they fight so hard they can’t even fuck afterwards, and Jesse knows it’s the end. Gabriel hates the world and hates what they’ve become more than he hates himself, and Jesse doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to come back from that. 

It’s an almost suspiciously quiet week when Jesse searches Gabriel out. Finds him in his office, staring at a computer screen full of maps and figures with such despair in his eyes Jesse can’t stop himself from reaching out, running a hand through hair cut short to hide how it’s greying and thinning. 

They stare at each other for long minutes before Jesse pushes Gabriel’s chair back, sinks to his knees with a wince as his knees audibly crack.

He’s not seventeen any more, in so very many ways.

Afterwards he sits in Gabriel’s lap, the chair creaking as it’s not meant to carry that much weight. He rides him slowly, tiredly, breathing the same air. Jesse comes with his forehead pressed to Gabriel’s, messily all over his fist. Gabriel wipes his hand off on his faded Blackwatch shirt before digging bruises into Jesse’s lower back, finally coming a second time long minutes later with a soft sigh.

Before Jesse stands up he kisses Gabriel, long and slow. Gabriel lets him but looks confused afterwards. It’s not what they do.

When Jesse packs up the few belongings he cares about and steals away in the dead of night, he wonders if Gabriel knew it was coming. 

Probably.

-x-x-x-x-x-

Jesse purposefully loses the fragile family he’d made. Unpurposefully loses his arm. Loses and loses until there’s nothing left for him to do but rebuild.

He finds - people. Sombra. Genji, though he doesn’t stay. Ana, eventually, who unfortunately comes with Morrison. Jesse could do without him but he’d rather have his brand of insanity in front of him than at his back. 

Jesse gets his life back together bit by bit, starts to form a new one. Free from - well. Everything, for the first time in his life. 

Free to build up bounties in the millions, free to dodge Ashe as best he can, free to buy a little house in the middle of nowhere that he doesn’t do much with but by god it’s  _ his. _

Free to ignore the recall.

Free to take whatever jobs he wants, even when it sticks him back in Italy when he swore once in Rome and then for good in Venice that he was never, ever going back. Freedom comes with a price, however, and that’s fending for yourself instead of having the government pick up your tab. Jesse goes through replacement arms faster than he goes through shoes, and his arm is considerably more expensive than a pair of boots. You do what you have to, when survival money is on the line.

And so when he should have known better Jesse finds himself with a clawed hand wrapped around his neck, blood trickling from a hundred small wounds and staining black leathers darker. 

He peels his freedom back, exposing raw nerve and inexpertly healed bone and offers it up. 

Through cracked raw lips he says  _ come back to me. _ Through a half-crushed throat he whispers that  _ there’s something missing. _

Reaper takes off his mask and Jesse cries to see what’s underneath, but it’s not like he’s not missing pieces as well and maybe their outsides are starting to match their insides now. 

They were fractured before and they’re broken now, but it’s on their own terms and maybe, maybe they can pull themselves back together now.

Together, now.

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/thereweregiants)


End file.
